


Someone Else's Story

by Clarice Chiara Sorcha (claricechiarasorcha)



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Imagined Universe, Established Relationship, M/M, Poor Emotional Adjustment, dream-sharing, war games
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-21
Updated: 2017-03-21
Packaged: 2018-10-09 00:11:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10399314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/claricechiarasorcha/pseuds/Clarice%20Chiara%20Sorcha
Summary: The words rumbled out of him like thunder, a low feral growl. “I’ll show yourealcombat.”And his own smile bared more teeth than logic dictated the existence of. “Inside that mess of a head of yours?”“No.” This smile was worse: almost sweet, riddled deep with sudden amusement. “By utilising that disaster of a mind ofyours.”Ren lays down a challenge.Hux accepts it....in retrospect, they've never worked well together.





	

**Author's Note:**

> (This is a repost of a story I deleted, for a lot of bullshit personal reasons you don't want to hear about. I'm reposting it for more of the same. Go figure.)
> 
> So, a couple of weeks ago I went to Wellington, principally because it was my birthday and I hate my birthday and I distracted myself from it by playing with lions and lemurs and red pandas. But while I was there, I also went for a wander to Te Papa, and got sucker punched by a particular exhibition I'd not seen before. [_Gallipoli: The Scale of Our War_](http://gallipoli.tepapa.govt.nz/). I figure it sounds weird -- and in all honesty, if you encounter many Kiwis and Aussies, you might get that that we _are_ weird about Gallipoli in general -- but if you are ever in Wellington while the exhibit is there, go see it. I mean, if you're from overseas, you're probably in Wellington at least partly for some Weta Workshop action anyway, and they had a large hand in creating the set pieces. It's worth it even for that artistry alone.
> 
> But in the end, it just gave me massive terrible feels about the realities of the ground soldiers during war (even more so than going to actual Gallipoli itself, strangely enough). I also, to some extent, blame Rogue One for this because that movie was probably the most realistic portrayal of the shitty situation in that galaxy that we've seen, and it's really stuck with me ever since. And so, I decided to write this.
> 
> It's one of those fics that I'm never really going to be sure about, so I suppose I'll leave it to speak for itself. I'll just make the observation that it was supposed to be called "Someone Else's War," but while I was typing that [I got stuck with a lyric](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsXX1ws739Y) that goes _just sudden moments/from someone else's story/will it ever be the same/again?_ and so it ended up like this.
> 
> Also, I apparently don't believe in happy endings. Death doesn't stick, but nothing ends well for anybody. Just so you know.

Perhaps the most irritating drawback to such excellent sex was that the moment it ended, one or the other of them almost immediately felt the urge to start an argument. It also never seemed to make a difference when the sex had been particularly excellent, either – but then it so often was, and not only by his own careful design. He could admit that their inherent compatibility was more by blind luck than anything else. But then Hux could not dismiss it as unimportant simply by that basis alone. It had its uses, and he’d made the best of them where he could.

In truth, there simply was no better method for stress relief open to him here. It was but a bonus that he also took great pleasure in himself taking Kylo Ren to a thousand pieces, in taking that great ungainly body under his own full command. By whim and by fingertip, Hux could reduce Ren to nearly nothing. Given Ren so rarely permitted dominion over himself under any other circumstance, Hux very much appreciated the power of it – even though Hux could also acknowledge that he had no idea of what sort of Master the Supreme Leader was to Ren. But yet, in moments such as these, Ren became nothing more than Hux’s plaything.

So perhaps it was only inevitable that when he came back to himself, Ren would turn irascible and unpliable – would return to his default state, which happened to be as irritating and infuriating as he was when upon the command deck, in the holochamber, at the head of a conference table. Though even Hux could admit that he was just inviting it now when he first swept a robe about his own sweat-damp shoulders, and then nudged at the sprawling lump of human flesh taking up more space than necessary upon the ruin of his bedclothes.

“Are you still alive?”

Immediately he rolled back, dark eyes narrowed and glaring. “As if _you_ could ever kill by orgasm alone.”

“Oh, well, I don’t know about that.” With one teasing finger, Hux began to trace a light rune of ownership right over the taut abdomen, stretched like canvas over the broad frame beneath. His medium was his own congealing spend, and he had to smirk at the way Ren jerked beneath the drag of one nail. “From the sounds you were making, earlier, it sounded to me like nothing more than _absolute_ surrender.”

Ren did not rise, nor move away from the relentless touch. But his eyes had fixed themselves only to the dull monotony of the ceiling above. “I don’t need you for what I want.”

“Liar.” Almost sweetly spoken, for all their bitter taste, Hux took the words and pressed them against the fierce flat seam of Ren’s lips. “Without me,” he whispered, “you wouldn’t have known any of _this_ at all.”

Ren jerked his head to the side; Hux leaned back at his own leisure, the robe gaping open to reveal that despite their already intensive activities, his cock would not be disinclined to another round in the near future. Still, he had lazily hitched a knot in the belt, was considering rising for a trip to the ‘fresher, when Ren finally made his rejoinder.

“You speak of experience as if it were all that truly mattered.”

“Well.” Though neither of them were anything like hard, and would not be again for some time yet, Hux shifted to lie over him, dragged his hips against Ren’s in long slow slide. “Simply _having_ this monstrous cock in your possession, Ren, doesn’t grant you any inherent skill in its practical use. It was _me_ who taught you all of that.”

“But what of war?” Those dark eyes, unfathomable as the void, empty of all but reflected light, gazed into him as if they would drink deep of his soul, and leave only the bones. Hux shifted as he rose, ignoring the strange trip of cool air down the ladder of his spine.

“What of it?”

“ _You_ know nothing of _real_ war.” And his great chest vibrated with sudden bitter laughter, mocking and bright. “If _experience_ if all that truly matters to you, you’ve built your ego on some fragile foundations, _General_ Hux!”

They had been mocking each other since their first meeting – and Hux remembered it well. The orphan who was not really an orphan, and the commandant’s son who’d become a genuine orphan by choice. They’d clashed from the moment they’d met. And now, both expression and words turned cold and hard, so like the permafrost of Starkiller below.

“I _earned_ my rank.”

“Through simulations and cleverly told stories,” Ren replied, dismissive even when lying in the remnants of his begged pleasures. “That’s not _experience_ , Hux. Not in the way that you seem to think counts for the most.”

“And you? The little war hound of Master Snoke?” His robe had tightened now, Hux fussing with the collar as though it were a uniform. And he scowled at the brief reflection of himself in the transparisteel, never once looking back even as he tossed the words over his shoulder. “And what true _war_ have you ever known?”

Though he did not look back, he could feel those dark eyes upon him, again. Even when Ren wore the mask, Hux always knew when his attention had been focused on him alone. “I have known more than you could even imagine,” he said, so slow, so careless, “here at the helm of your little battlecruiser, filled with toy soldiers and experimental starfighters that haven’t even felt the burn of a real fight.”

He turned, bare hands fisted, face burning with this rising flush of utter fury. “I have been through more battles than you could ever _dream_ of—”

“ _Fuck_ your simulations.” Here he rose from the bed, gloriously naked, a berserker force stalking close; Hux could scent himself upon his skin, in that wild hair, could see himself reflected in those damned dark eyes. And now they stood nose to nose, Ren’s generous lips twisted to half-smirk. “And you have no idea of what even a _dream_ truly is. Not to someone with mastery over the Force.”

Hux did not retreat. Hux knew no surrender. Not in this. “Oh, so you’re saying your _magic_ could teach me more than a simulation built from the ground up, interwoven with a thousand and more variables to provide the most visceral and realistic experience outside of true combat?”

The words rumbled out of him like thunder, a low feral growl. “I’ll show you _real_ combat.”

And his own smile bared more teeth than logic dictated the existence of. “Inside that mess of a head of yours?”

“No.” This smile was worse: almost sweet, riddled deep with sudden amusement. “By utilising that disaster of a mind of _yours_.”

Twisting away from the finger Ren attempted to poke at his temple, Hux took two steps backward, and paused. Of course Ren wore a triumphant expression, as though he had already won. Fury rose, clear and clean and demanding, but he pressed it back. In his experience, true victory always had a far more palatable taste – and one more fit to savour.

“When?”

Ren’s brow furrowed suddenly. “ _When_?”

“Yes. _When_ are we going to do this?”

Wariness entered both words and stance, for the first time. “General.” Clearing his throat, now, he took even longer about his slow words than his usual wont. “You are not familiar with the Force—”

“Are you trying to back out of a challenge, Ren? By making out that _I_ am the one who is weak and unprepared?” He actually chuckled, the sound jagged and sharp. “Fine. I’ll say no. I’ll back down and let this go. But only if _you_ say outright it’s because you’re a fucking coward who can’t see a battle through to even the bloodiest of endings.”

Hux had never been able to work out if there was any actual colour to Ren’s eyes. They were nothing more than black, now. “Tomorrow, then. At the end of the day cycle. Right here.” Again his lips twisted, expression like the massing of dark clouds upon a storm-broken horizon. “And it’s on _your_ head. Whatever happens.”

“As if it’s _my_ fault when you can’t control your wizard powers,” Hux snorted, though he didn’t wait for any many of reply, already turning to step into the ‘fresher. Ren’s ominous warnings meant nothing. Simulations had long been a speciality of his. Nothing of Kylo Ren’s mind, twisted and peculiar though it might be, could surprise Armitage Hux.

Still he found himself jerking off beneath the hot water, wasting far more than his allotted allowance as he took his time about it. He felt no surprise to find Ren gone when he returned to his bed. But it did startle him somewhat the next evening when he returned to his quarters and found Ren seated there. He had dressed only in soft sleeping clothes, helmet nowhere in sight.

“You know I hate it when you come in here without permission,” he said, turning his back on the man as he moved to hang up his greatcoat, to stow away his command cap, to reach for the jack that made removing his boots more of a simple slide than an inelegant struggle. “You better not have broken my lock again.”

“Wear something comfortable.” Low, monotonous, his voice sounded as though he’d been in that strange meditative state that usually turned Hux’s skin prickly and cold. He didn’t care for the Force, at all.

_So why give yourself over to it, now?_

Stepping into the ‘fresher, sleeping clothes in hand, Hux met his own eyes in the mirror and grimaced. The temptation to come back naked was a strong one, if only to be obstructive. But such behaviour was not in his nature – or, if it had been, years of training in the charnel grounds of the Empire had long since beaten it from him. Dressed in a soft shirt and trousers, he came to stand before the bed. Ren now lay on his back, still as a corpse laid out for ritual spacing.

“Ren—”

“Lie down here beside me.”

Even as a general, Hux was still primed to respond to command. He did so now with clear reluctance, knowing Ren would sense it and still not give a damn. Staring at the ceiling, he felt a fool. But then, he’d known himself for such from the first moment he’d permitted Ren to share such space with him.

“Well.” A long sigh, coloured clear with regret, escaped the man at his side. “Welcome to Revan 6.”

Hux tilted his head, eyes narrowed. “To _what_?”

But it was too late. He’d turned his eyes to meet Ren’s own, but they never did. They were gone. _Ren_ was gone. And when he clenched his fingers in the coverlet, it was gone too. Something small and strange twisted high in his chest, fluttering and chill, and he tried to sit up.

But he couldn’t. Ren was gone. The bed was gone. The _Finalizer_ was gone. He was unanchored and drifting and _lost_ —

_Not lost_. Ren’s voice, like a locator beacon, pinged somewhere in the distance. _Follow me, General. And remember: you asked for this_.

But then, in a rare and strange moment of truest bitterness, Hux wondered if either of them had ever known what they truly wanted.

 

*****

 

They all call him Lurch, because KR-1911 is the sort of Stormtrooper who is outsized in what seems _every_ aspect. Nothing fits him, not even his own unit. In his unsuccessful attempts to blend in with them, he hunches his great shoulders and shortens his long strides – and so, whenever he moves he instead appears to _lurch_ from place to place, with no real discipline or grace whatsoever.

But his strength is great, and AH-1205 can appreciate that in a combat partner. They are from different units, hence their wildly different designations, but the AH and KR units have long been blended in matters of strike teams and sniping ability. The KR units move and operate the heavy artillery; the AH units accompany and cover them with long-range blasters and an eye for accuracy that has been the bane of more than one engaged enemy.

Naturally AH-1205 has a nickname of his own. _Red_. It’s hardly original or imaginative, given the distinctive blaze of his hair. Sometimes Lurch pacifies him by claiming it’s more because of what he does to everyone he brings into the sights of his rifle. There are many more literal redheads in this sector of this galaxy than mere genetics ought to account for. And AH-7789 is a particularly significant source of the issue.

Red himself prefers that interpretation, especially given that it’s ironic; the only time Red spreads his wild seed, it inevitably ends up in Lurch’s mouth or palm or ass. And while Red’s always preferred cock anyway, Lurch’s is just as ridiculously generous in proportion as the rest of him. It’s not like he was ever going to say _no_ to keeping it all to himself.

They’d fucked just this morning, in fact: hurried and quick in the barracks, their bunkmates too accustomed to such blatant display to even attempt to ignore it. Not that Red would have been surprised if one or two hadn’t palmed themselves under the sheets during the act. And he didn’t care. Morale was morale – and if stolen pleasure was enough to calm a mind before a battle, it’s no skin off Red’s nose as to where his comrades get it from. And he certainly had enjoyed himself, with Lurch’s tits twisted beneath his grasping palms, ass swallowing that great cock as he bit and mouthed and swore against the racing pulse of a thick and pulsing throat.

They’d been paired for this mission, of course: their set-up a sniper nest hollowed out of a hill just across from one of the artillery units. Red and his rifle proved a deadly combination to any and all infantry units below. But Lurch had his place. More than one enterprising soldier had sought them out only to have their neck snapped, body sent rolling down the hill in simple careless warning.

Red can lie for many hours in one position without need to move, but this is not a dug-in position; as the night wears on, turns quiet, he lets go the rifle on its stand. Rising to stretch his legs, his shoulders, he ends by pushing his hair back from his forehead. Most snipers ditch their helmets, for all they have ambient environment control and HUDs that provide occasionally useful intel. But they also have spotters for that, though at this moment Red’s own has also removed his, squinting up at the ridge as though the naked eye could make out some detail missed by the most extensive technology in this sector of the galaxy. A lone starfighter buzzes low over their heads, but there is no answering fire from across the way.

“The gun is out.”

“Of ammo?”

“No. I was counting.” His lips twist, one hand passing back over the thin short fuzz of his dark hair. “I think the gunners are dead.”

The faint frisson of sorrow that arrows into his gut is just as quickly brushed aside. He’ll know their designations when they are listed. And he’ll know their nicknames, too. Even though those are never spoken outside the unit, let alone posted on an Order casualty briefing. “That will be the end of our cover, then,” Red says, instead, and scowls down at their own now-unguarded posting. “We should move.”

“Without orders?”

Waving one hand, Red already crouches to begin the quick familiar movement of dismantling his rifle. “Call it in. See what they say.”

But the comms give them nothing but static. They stare – first at one another, and then at the fizzle of the screen. In tandem, as one unit, they both look up. Before, the lull had seemed to their advantage. Now, the ridge has turned deadly in its quiet.

“Pfassking hell, what is going _on_ ,” Red mutters, for a moment forgetting even his beloved weapon. At his side, Lurch has gone very still. Too still.

“We should move.”

“Lurch—”

His voice roars out into the night. “ _Move_!”

And the bulk of him hits him low, and hard; Red can barely acknowledge the blow before he is falling, rolling, the world turning around him like a demented kaleidoscope, all bright broken colour and jagged edges. There’s desert dust and blood in his mouth, and when it finally stops he feels like he’s still moving, something in him rattled loose and gone far away.

But when he opens his eyes, it seems he’s all there: legs, arms, head, torso. No rifle, however. They’re at the bottom of the valley beneath the ridge, and when he looks up the other side he can see their nest, now merrily ablaze. Above the scream of starfighters rends the air; they’re wheeling, coming back, their formation fierce and determined. Staring up, shielding his eyes, Red can barely track their rapid paths. Their helmets are gone, lost with the nest.

“They’re headed for the base,” he says, useless an observation as it might be. Lurch is already on his feet, staring upward, but away from the combatants above.

“We need to get to the gun. Up there. Across from us.”

Incredulous, now, Red turns to his partner. “Lurch, we just hit every rock _rolling_ down this bloody hill. Do you really think we can climb its twin in anything less than an entire pfassking cycle?”

His eyes are dark holes in the night. “I’ll carry you, if I have to.”

And he snorts, even as he tests his weight on bruised legs, winces at the protest of one wrenched ankle. “I might just make you.”

But they were built for this. Clambering their way up is more arduous than it might have been under better circumstances, but they make it. Even when Lurch insists on stopping for a piss. How he can manage it in these circumstances, Red had no idea; his own kidneys and bladder are shrivelled high in his gut, utterly uninterested in their designated function for the meantime. And above, the starfighters still come. They can be heartened by the fact there is return fire from the ground, but the ridge remains tight-lipped. That is bad. They were never meant to lose the ridge.

Lurch’s hand falls first on the cannon, even as Red stumbles up beside him but a moment later. “You know how this thing works?”

“I’m a sniper, not a cannon jockey.” Even as he complains, he’s mounting it; Red knows his weapons, and though this hulking thing is hardly the sleek and lovely extension of his body that is his meticulously-maintained rifle, he can improvise. Still, the thought of his rifle has his stomach heaving, his lips pulled back in a snarling grimace. Said rifle is still up on the nest. Which is now just a smoking ruin. All he has now is his sidearm, small in calibre and in size, and certainty without the range he is accustomed to.

But Red grits his teeth. He has more than just the sidearm underneath his hands now, and his codes will get him into the gun’s computer. While he doesn’t remember much of its operation, instinct has always come so easily to a mind as quick and curious as his own. As the hydraulics hiss to life he tightens his grip, twisting the barrel around as the sights light up, one foot already depressing the pedal that charges the cell.

He doesn’t let it linger long. Arching fire erupts up and over the sky: a pulsing blue comet, screaming across the stars like the loosed wrath of the gods. One, then two starfighters: both fall from the sky in a rain of burning metal. Lurch’s whoop breaks through the air like a beacon, though he can’t really berate him for bringing attention to their position. The plasma belching from the barrel does that well enough on its own. Another shot, another a starfighter winged; his legendary aim is only made more deadly by dint of overly generous firepower.

Their position is too open, and there will be no support. But Red is making his own way. Red is having _fun_. The shot that inevitably ends it all comes as a surprise to him. But it doesn’t hit _him_. A heavy weight instead barrels into his side, knocking him down from his perch upon the cannon. It then somersaults over him as Red finds himself eating dirt. After that, only: stillness. Even with his ears ringing, he knows the gun has gone silent. But all that actually matters is the stranger silence to his left. On hands and knees, head low, Red lurches to the side of his comrade.

He’s on his back, and as Red comes close he at last draws one gasping breath. That is all Red needs to come to the conclusion that Lurch is dying. That Lurch is leaving him behind. The great idiot. He never thinks things through. Or, he never _thought_ things through. With the gaping, smoking hole through his abdomen, it’s not as if he’ll ever be thinking much of anything ever again.

The sudden, strong memory hits him like a blow to the solar plexus: it’s of taste, of the way his tongue would slide over those muscles, lips rasping against the trail of dark hair moving from navel down to where hard thighs press tight together. All of it is ruined, now. The smooth skin, once only faintly prickled with scar tissue: it is now collapsed in upon itself, little more than ragged edges and burned flesh. All that was once within now spills out as though Lurch does not need it. As if it does not matter that Lurch should be _alive_.

Fury fills him to capacity and beyond, leaking from him like acid. But it is not directed only at those to whom the now-useless cannon had been aimed. Lurch had _known_ it would end this way. And still he’d tried. But still he’d gone on serving masters who could not care less for their connections, for the hopes and dreams of those who were in reality but fodder for whatever artillery stands between the upper echelons and whatever it is they crave next.

And he’d saved Red. Given himself for Red.

And Red, now, is alone.

“Red.” A voice rises from that dead place, imagined and cruel. It sounds like Lurch, but it can’t be Lurch. Lurch is dead. Red is staring down at the body. Whatever those lips are doing, they are not moving.

And, above, the firefight continues. They’ve lost interest in the cannon, between the burst of flame and the lack of fire that had followed. He doesn’t care about that. Not with the conundrum of a dead Lurch lying before him now. Command won’t even let him retrieve the body, and Red knows that. He knows it as well as the fact he’ll have not the slightest chance of completing the retreat while dragging Lurch’s ungainly broken mass behind him. But it feels more of a betrayal that _they_ will not help. There will be no support, no cavalry, no ceremony for the passing of this dead.

“ _Red_.”

He is dead, and he is gone, and he is of no use to the Order now.

“ _Red!_ ”

And still he speaks: it comes almost as an accusation, or perhaps just memory sharpened to a weapon that had been fashioned only for frank evisceration. AH-1205 wishes for nothing more than to close his eyes, to put his hands over his ears and grit his teeth as he curls into a foetal position beneath the smoking shadow of a cannon that is broken beyond repair. They share that much, the cannon and himself. The bleeding hydraulic fluid is bitter in his nostrils, like the taste of copper on his skin and salt in his eyes.

“Why won’t you look at me?”

“Because you’re _dead_!” It bursts out of him like buckshot, burning and broken and boring into every inch of exposed and bleeding flesh. “You’re _dead_ and you’re _gone_ and I can’t get back on my own but no-one’s going to come out here because the hardware’s totalled but they’ve got plenty more and what’s the point of retrieving one fucked up soldier when there’s always more where I came from?”

“Red.” The voice comes thick and heavy, like he’s hacking up the organs half-liquefied in what remains of his opened abdomen. Red, for his own part, can still taste the sizzle of them; more horrific than the way it turns his stomach is the way it growls after, reminding him of how long it has been since his last meal.

“Red…”

Again, he wishes for nothing more than to dig his fingernails into his ear drums, pressing down hard until they tear and pop and he’s left with nothing more than the scream of silence. “Go _away_ , you’re dead!” Impossibly, remarkably, his words have turned half to laughter, half to hysteria. “I had to listen to you enough when you were alive. Why are you haunting me like this?”

For a moment, there is silence, and Red thinks he is alone. A scream bubbles its way up through the tightness of his chest, cut off at the last by a very, very small voice from the darkness.

“….am I really dead?”

“Yes.” A liquid drawing in of breath, and he nearly chokes on it, every muscle tight and screaming. “Go away.”

He doesn’t mean it. “But I can’t,” Lurch says, and Red is as relieved as he is furious. “I want to stay here.”

That sends something like disbelief shuddering through him, for all the conversation itself should be proof enough of his own encroaching madness. “ _Here_?”

“With you.” Lurch’s voice is thick with confusion – and something like contentment, too. He’s never made sense. He doesn’t make it now even when he says, “I just want to stay with _you_.”

With his head now cradled in aching hands, Red wonders which commanding officer will be blamed for this. If they’re even held responsible for it. Entire units, gone – because even if he makes it back behind safe lines, it’s clear he’s fallen quite into insanity. Not even the fiercest of reconditioning will take this memory from him. Even if he retreats, it will follow. But he needs to retreat. He needs to get out of here. No rescue will come. Only Red himself will save trooper AH-1205.

“Don’t leave me.”

“You’re dead. I have to leave you.” Reaching blindly for his pack, he slings it on without winching at the pull against bruised and broken skin. But he cannot mask his grimace when he finds his sidearm slippery with blood. It even seems to grow tacky beneath the heat of his skin, for all he’s never felt quite this cold.

“I’m going, now.”

“Red.” Something like panic rises in his voice, pulsing and sharp. “I don’t know if I can go with you,” he says, and it’s as much a plea as it is an accusation. “Not if you don’t take me, too.”

“I _can’t_ take you.” Anger makes his voice hard, higher than normal. “I’ll die too,” he says, and he can’t help the ugliness of it. “Do you _want_ me to die?”

He’s stricken, the words fading and hurt. “I just…” It’s almost a whisper now, pained and uncertain. “I don’t want to be left out here alone.”

“You’re dead.” This time when he rolls the muscles of his back, he feels the weight of something he supposes is guilt, like a star destroyer bearing down upon his back. “I have to go.”

“Look at me.”

It’s a command more than a plea. “I’ve seen enough.” It’s supposed to be offhand, detached; instead it’s something strangled, screaming in his throat. And when he speaks again, this time it comes out like a sob. “Lurch, if you ever thought…”

“It’s okay.” And something about his voice, even in this place, even in this disaster, almost makes Red believe him. “Just one more time. Please.”

Hunched over, in the darkness, Red closes his eyes. It doesn’t change anything. He can still see tattooed there the remains of KR-1911. If this one dead ‘trooper receives any acknowledgement from Command, it will probably be to say that his dereliction of duty resulted in the loss of his unit’s plasma cannon. It would say nothing of how he had sacrificed his own life to get the longest possible use out of the fucking thing.

“Lurch?”

And it’s soothing, despite the fact Red can taste the burning sizzle of his flesh upon a dry tongue. “I’m right here.”

Red tightens his eyes, and considers that perhaps he hasn’t just _gone_ mad. Perhaps he has _always_ been mad. Why else would he have stayed here? The entire lifetime he remembers has been nothing but structured, ordered, perfect madness. Why has he never thought of running before?

“Because you forgot there was anything outside the ‘troopers.” It’s pitying, but gentle. Lurch shouldn’t be able to read his thoughts. And yet it feels somehow natural, somehow inevitable, even as he lets his bitterness drip from each word.

“And _you_ remember, now?”

“I’m dead.” He sounds less upset about that, oddly, though the strain enters his words again when he asks one last time: “Red, _please_.”

He doesn’t want to see it again. He will see it again every time he closes his eyes for the rest of his life. But he sighs, then takes another, deeper breath. Something tugs in his chest, low down and alarming. If he needs to run, later, it probably won’t go well for him. But then, if he must run, things will have probably already resolved themselves to an inevitable conclusion anyway.

He turns, looks back to his dead comrade, and the imagined voice that comes from the body’s direction.

Except, Lurch stands there. Tall and simple, broad shoulders straight, head slightly cocked. The dark hair is longer than Red has ever seen it, covering his ridiculous ears, curling about the long line of his pale throat. He wears no armour, no body sock: just simple robes, possibly beige in colour, though it’s impossible to say for sure. And that’s because all around him, emanating from _within_ him, is soft blue _brilliant_ light—

He’s standing, feet barely holding him aloft, stumbling, somehow moving neither backward nor forward even when all instinct says to turn he wants to go forward to the _light_ oh there is so much _Light_ —

The impact takes him before the crack of sound reaches him. It doesn’t matter, his eyes are full of roaring blood and his vision is cracked and shattered and coated in _red_ everything is _so fucking red_ except for Lurch, Lurch is blue and Lurch is light and Lurch’s dark eyes are open in wide horror but Red can still see something like a smile, unsure and soft, and his arms are open and Red is falling and he’ll catch him, Lurch will catch him—

He falls through the light like a starship dropped from hyperspeed, and Lurch is warm beneath him, the hollow of his ruined abdomen opening up around him like a cradle. Red knows his eyes are open, but he can’t see anything. He’d move, but his body is distant and almost half-forgotten. His head has become an eruption of perfect agony, as if everything inside of his skull is slowing working itself free, catastrophic burning lahar. The collar of his armour feels warm and somehow full, and it’s not as if he can move to get away from it.

And he sighs. He can hear it, a rattling, groaning sound, as if somehow something has scooped his chest hollow and now beats tunelessly upon the instrument of bloodied ribs within.

“I’m sorry.” Lurch’s voice is so close to his ear. “I’m so, so sorry.”

Red knows he’s not. But as he feels another body lay down over him from above, warmer and softer than the cooling one below, he finds he doesn’t really care.

And he doesn’t close his eyes, either. It’s still all black anyway. But he can see something like the light. It’s warm. It’s welcome. He doesn’t have to fight his way home, now. He doesn’t have to go back to a life without Lurch, because Lurch is here, and Lurch is _warm_ , and Lurch is filled with Light and Red can see it. Even when he sees nothing, he still sees Lurch.

And he’s smiling, now, even when the light goes out.

 

*****

 

The hands on him were dragging him out. But Hux did not know even what it was that he found himself trapped within. Still he gasped for precious oxygen, his entire body given over to instinct; his hands shifted between claw and fist, the ball of his foot and then an angled knee driven into whatever it was that tried to hold him down. Somewhere, in the din of it all, he could hear his name. But still he fought, like a man lost and drowning, scrabbling for the surface even when he didn’t know anymore which way was up.

“ _Armitage_!”

The hated name was an invocation: there were perhaps four people in the galaxy who might use it, and all but one were dead. It stilled him to silence, flat upon his back. And now he could take some stock of his surroundings: these were his quarters. This was his bed. And the man holding him down by his wrists, stretched high over his head with knees dug into his hips, was Kylo Ren. Staring up into those dark eyes, he remembered suddenly the taste of blood and ash and plasma burn—

“What the pfassking hell _was_ that?”

It was supposed to be a demand, a curse, an admonition. It trembled instead upon the air between them, like rain not yet fallen upon parched and dying land. Ren didn’t look away. But there was something distant in his gaze when he tightened his lips, said only, “I don’t _know_.”

When he wrenched his wrists free, jerking his body up and free of Ren’s crushing weight, the larger man made no protest. And much as Hux would prefer to rise, to put as much distance between them as humanly possible upon a battlecruiser no more than three kilometres in length, he had the bitter feeling his knees would give way before he could take even one step.

Instead, he used only bitter words with which to open that chasm. “Why would you _do_ that?”

Ren remained very still, like a terrible dark statue set before the entrance of some crumbling ruin of a Sith temple. “I didn’t.”

His laughter was jagged, a blade against his own bleeding throat. “Well, forgive me for not noticing them earlier, but I’m really not seeing any _other_ Force-sensitives in this room.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

Staring at him, Hux expected only fury. But instead the bent profile of Ren’s face invoked clear memory: and then, it was nothing but emblazoned across his mind. Kylo, lying dead. Bloodied and ruined and so very, very still. And then, Kylo, in the garb of a pfassking _Jedi Master_ —

“It’s not like one of your simulations.” He’d turned, now, eyes very dark in a face as pale as the driven snow of Starkiller. “I don’t control every fucking aspect of it. I just take the threads and start the weave and let the pattern define itself—”

“ _Stop_.” The tremor that rocked him now was not that of an adult. It was a child’s reaction, a child’s weakness. It was the memory of the darkest days after the fall of the Empire, when he and his father had been under house arrest, waiting either capture or rescue. Relentless storms of the winter season had so often left even their once-grand house without power. The great trees of the avenue would whip back and forth in the wind, battered by rain, the sky a grim black-blue bruise behind it. In those moments young Armitage had known the terror of a world beyond his control – but if ever he’d sought comfort from the only other living being in the building, his father would slap him about the head, sending him away again. With head ringing and eyes stinging he would slink back to his bed, cocooning himself in thin blankets as the storm howled to greater force outside what should have been the safest place in his young life—

Clambering over the bed, utterly without elegance, Hux fisted his hands in the non-regulation ruin of Ren’s dark hair. There, upon his knees, almost nose to nose, he only stared. Ren made no move of his own, eyes wide and startled. The kiss that followed did drag from his throat a sound like surprise, but one soon killed stone dead when Hux then swallowed it whole. Said kiss had turned biting, almost bleeding. Dragging him forward, Hux teetered, almost falling, almost pulling Ren down on him, with him. It stopped as suddenly as it started, Hux pulling back, gasping, something like nausea twisting his guts as he first sought and then found his unsteady feet.

Still seated upon the bed like a chastised child, Ren’s dark wide eyes stared at him. But he didn’t say a damned thing, and already Hux was turning, stumbling to the ‘fresher. Having skipped dinner, as was his habit, he had nothing to throw up. Instead he just bent over the small sink, abdomen tightening all the more as he hunched further forward. One shaking hand grasped, turned on the tap; it was all so much wasted water, curling down the drain in chuckling gurgle. He could not wedge his head under it, and in this moment all he wanted was to drown.

Eventually sense had him pulling back, locating a glass that he overfilled three times before shutting off the spigot. One sip and he was already gagging on it; the scent of smoke and burned ozone filled mouth and nostrils, stomach a roiling disaster. He went to put the glass down, misjudged the distance, water spilling and the sound echoing like blaster shot. His hand, trembling, raked back through his hair, clawed uselessly at the swell of his skull. And when he stepped out into the bedroom, every step felt drunken and unsure.

There was no-one there.

“Ren?” It should have been a demand. It faltered on every syllable that followed. “Ren, where…” His voice rose, sudden and sharp and afraid. “ _Kylo_!”

“I’m in here.”

For reasons Hux could never hope to understand, Ren had risen from the bed and gone back to the main chamber. But he couldn’t be leaving – he was dressed still only in what passed for sleeping attire, silhouetted against the viewport, not looking back even as Hux stared at him.

Everything about this had been a mistake. The best solution would have been to slam the door closed between them, and to never speak of it again. But Hux could still taste blood in his mouth, could still feel the burn of ash on skin and in his throat. Striding forward, locking one hand about his upper arm, Hux wrenched Ren around. His entire body vibrated with nothing other than the urge to backhand him across the face, to rake it with his nails and drive a fist into the orbit of each eye.

Ren looked only drawn and weary, no defensiveness to his stance. He only stared, eyes full of the words his lips would not form. And suddenly Hux took those lips, again, all but throwing his entire weight at him. Experience told him Ren could pick him up, could carry him, could hold his weight up while fucking into him.

But he staggered, stumbled now – driven first to one knee, then the other. Hux couldn’t care less. Still he bit and tugged at those lips when he began to pull at the shirt, the drawstring of the soft sleeping trousers. Clumsy and crippled, every movement came as a struggle; even when he just grabbed uselessly at the waistband and _pulled_ , still he failed.

Changing tacks, by now on his own knees, Hux braced both hands on Ren’s shoulders and shoved him backward to the cool alusteel of the floor. It brought no protest. Ren continued to stare up at him, every word unspoken. The memory of Lurch had Hux choking: he could _see_ it, and so damned well: the unmarred face above, and the disaster wreaked upon the body beneath. A snarl, distantly heard even as he felt his lips and throat form the furious sound: and then the shirt was shoved up. Before him lay exposed Kylo Ren’s abdomen, broad and flat, heavy with muscle, _intact_.

His lips knew their mark; his tongue pressed into the navel even as Ren arched upward. It had been so strange, the day he had discovered that the dark hulking warrior of the Knights was ticklish, and in such a place. Pulling the trousers down at last, Hux found no underwear beneath. He did not care, not when it so quickly revealed the heavy cock laid up against one thigh. Soft though it yet was, its size remained daunting. Already it was in his mouth, hardening beneath his lips and tongue.

Even as he loosed his jaw, pushed further forward, Hux shifted his hands to rub at hips, over thighs; blunt nails dragged at the soft white skin between them. The strong musky scent of him was always so concentrated here; Hux revelled in the faint taste of salt on heated skin, the bitterness of leaking precome. His own hair, disordered and ridiculous, fell forward. He ignored it, closed his eyes against the irritation. He was taking Ren into himself, tasting him, possessing him. Nothing else mattered.

Slowly, surely, Ren’s hips began to move; one hand slapped down hard on his stomach, holding him against the floor. Even as Hux swallowed Ren’s cock deeper still, he could feel the vibration of his displeasure. It displayed itself truly a moment later, when he arched his back upwards, the force and momentum enough to displace him, pushing Hux back onto his ass. Already he gathered his feet beneath him, ready to pounce, to take what he wanted. In turn Ren reached forward, hands hooking into Hux’s own trousers; with a shove they were around his knees and then a hand callused and too tight wrapped around his aching cock.

With head thrown back, eyes open and unseeing, Hux gave enough of an advantage for him to take full advantage of – even for Kylo Ren, one with the Force and by far the most powerful object within all First Order territory. Not even the colossal power of Starkiller could match what this man might yet achieve.

_And what might he_ really _do? If he is given true access to his_ full _power?_

All philosophy quite vanished the moment thick lips pressed around his own cock. Ren had come to him a practical virgin, but had shown an instinctive talent for sucking dick that Hux had been only too glad to indulge and develop to its greatest natural potential. But now: he was hardly in the mood to lie back and take it. He burned instead with the desire instead to take him inside, and to be taken in turn.

It proved a complicated manoeuvre to encourage, what with Ren’s hands digging bruising prints into the already mottled canvas of his own skin. Even as he at last shifted them both to their sides, the head of that ridiculous cock caught him a stinging sticky blow in one eye. Even as a growl twisted low in his chest, Hux opened his mouth, took it deep between his lips until it nudged his throat. Already Ren thrust deeper still, leaving Hux gagging, choking, eyes damp before spilling over, cheeks burning at the pressure of hot saltwater.

But Kylo returned the same, taking Hux into his own mouth even as he fucked into Hux’s face. But Hux could not buck his own hips; Ren’s large hands now splayed open over his buttocks, holding him still as though he sought to drink deep at the fount of all life.

The nudging of one blunt finger, deep between the cheeks, had his spine tightening in electric arc. His ass was nothing if not dry and tight, but still: a callused fingertip moved with purpose, dragging slow over the furl of muscle. Fluttering at the touch, so desperate to open up, Hux felt the pleasure explode along every nerve ending, mind lost in sudden white-out explosion. It was not quite release, but he teetered so close to the edge it might well have never existed.

Moaning, muttering now around the cock in his mouth, he felt it twitch; his own fingertips moved frantic feather-light brush over the heavy balls. Already they were tightening, rising, Ren’s pleasure turning the air about them to static pleasure-song.

A sudden breach had him gasping, writhing; just the tip, it reached nowhere near the prostate. Still Hux gasped, cock in agonising spasm as it spilled in one, two, three clenching desperate spurts. Ren followed a moment later, Hux’s mouth flooded, filling until even his nose was stinging with it, eyes tightly closed and his gag reflex screaming, mouth full of heat and pressure and _pleasure_.

When he drew away, choking, gasping for air, half-spitting – lips closed on his, and there was nothing then but the mingled terrible taste of both of them together. Gagging though he was, Hux did not draw back, did not let Ren do it either. With one hand fisted in his hair he swiped the other through the mess of them, and then that same hand slid over the half-hard cock.

Even as he began to work him again, it appeared Ren had had much the same idea; Kylo’s two longest fingers, now slick with unspeakable fluid, jammed up into him. Arching, with head thrown back, Hux let out a scream. His cock lay helpless and twitching and empty, but somehow his entire being was rocked by second release, his body shaking, his spirit untethered and desperate and so much _light_ —

After, in the dark, they lay together, reckless tangle upon the floor. He would move, but some part of him believed that he might never manage it again. But already, there was again that memory. It now pressed on him from all sides like a sarcophagus, choking and heavy and far too close.

And a sarcophagus, rich and beautiful and lovely, had been built only for one thing.

“We should get up.”

Ren sighed, but otherwise made no move to obey. “We should.”

Looking still at the ceiling overhead, Hux wondered if it had ever seemed so far distant. “I don’t think I can.”

“I…could help you.”

The unspoken invitation twisted in his abdomen like a gutting knife. Even when Hux closed his eyes, the darkness seemed far too inviting. “Can you really?” he whispered, opening them again, turning his head to the side. There before him, eyes wide and empty, Ren seemed nothing more than a puppet with all its strings cut clean.

“I can.”

He turned his eyes back to the ceiling. The bone-deep ache of every inch of him is more than just rough sex, is more than just the knowledge of a mistake made more than once. “Then do it.”

“Don’t you even want to know what it is, first?”

“No.” And every word was true, even when it wasn’t. “I don’t want to know anything of this.”

Slow, now, Ren sat up, leaned forward upon drawn-up knees. Hux could make out the glint of fresh blood upon his lips. “We should wait.” And there was shame, too, even as the words came out defensive and sharp. “I’m tired, and it will be complicated—”

“No.” Hux still hadn’t moved an inch. “Do it now.”

“Are you sure?”

All he wanted in that moment was to curl in upon himself, to cover eyes and ears and never again think of the disaster that was the two of them together. He wouldn’t sleep again. Not with Lurch’s broken body in his mind’s eye, not with his own brains spilling out of a broken braincase—

“I can’t.” His lips pressed tight together, but still he felt their tremble. “Ren…I _can’t_.”

The hands pressed over his face muffled the words, far worse than even his mask’s vocoder. “I’ll do it, then.” When he looked up, again, something strange and almost wondering had crossed his features. It left him oddly youthful, put something of the doomed Lurch in his expression as he loomed over him, all dark hair and darker eyes. “…I would die for you,” he whispered, too soft, too strange. “I never knew that. Before now.”

“That’s what I am afraid of.” And exhaustion kept him pinned to the floor, like some specimen splayed out for vivisection upon the table. “This…this sort of thing.” Hux swallowed hard, against a dry and rasping throat. “It’s not for people like us, Ren.”

His hand felt clammy and cold where he cupped his cheek. “There are no people like us.”

Thankfully he said nothing else. With a clear wince he pushed his arms beneath Hux, gathered him up against his chest. Hux did not protest. They were boneless and broken both. But Ren could still move. Ren had started this, and now he would end it. And when laid upon his own bed, he stared up at him, eyes unspoken command.

Kylo’s weight came down upon him, too quick. Even as Hux huffed, shifted enough to catch his breath again, he felt the hardening cock against the divot of one hip. With one hand between them, he caught it, moved in slow stroke. And Kylo let out a low, slow sigh.

“That isn’t necessary for this,” he whispered, face buried in his neck. Hux only snorted, jerked upward so that his own cock twitched in returned interest.

“Does it look like I care?”

Another sigh, and Ren rose over him, pale features crowned by that riot of dark rich hair. No, Hux had never liked the Force. Even when Ren stretched out one hand to the drawer, drawing from it by will alone the bottle of lubricant, he could not appreciate it.

“It just ruins everything,” he whispered, sudden, soft. And Ren nodded, just once. Their eyes never once broke, even as he continued to stroke him to full hardness, fingers pressing in.

“You think it’s a gift given to the unworthy,” he said, barely in the range of hearing. “But it’s a curse. It’s always been a curse, to me.”

Hux snorted, even as his cock slid in with a sigh. Whether it was pain or pleasure, it didn’t seem to matter. He closed his eyes, but everything had already gone black, and dead.

And still Ren shifted, deep inside of him. Hux thought he could hear him saying something. About the dark, or perhaps the light. But it didn’t matter. Not anymore. Not down here, alone in the true darkness, and the cold.

 

*****

 

Staring out over Starkiller, Hux found her calm and quiet, as primed and ready for service as any of the blaster rifles he himself had so favoured during his own training. Here, under his watchful eye and command, the Order had built this well-calibrated weapon, one that now awaited her use, awaited her _purpose_. So many years, so many resources – and all, brought to this conclusion. She would be ready, soon.

They would all be ready.

“General Hux.”

The voice filtered through the mask, low and monotonous. Hux did not turn to its source, preferring instead to gaze upon the weapon that was only ever _his_. As much power as the Knight might hold, he was reckless, he was uncontrollable, he was inappropriate for purpose. He was Snoke’s problem, and Hux had no intention of distracting himself with the Force user today. Not with Starkiller’s firing but days away.

“Kylo Ren,” he said, and the question was rhetorical, glacial. “What can I do for you?”

“I have a mission.” His way of speaking always came so stilted, almost broken. “Given down from the Supreme Leader.”

With a curl of his lips, Hux could not quite keep the disdain to himself. “Jakku.”

“You know of it?”

This time, it was bitterness that escaped his usual tight control. “I know you are to take the resources you deem necessary.” His mouth curled around the words. “I suppose you already have informed Phasma?”

“She is a valuable resource. Is it so strange I should make use of her?”

And he could only snort. “The Stormtroopers were bred for purpose and perfection, Lord Ren. They will not fail. That is not what they were made for.”

But Ren made no immediate reply. When he glanced over, the strangeness in his posture had Hux frowning even before he spoke again.

“And the battle at Revan 6?”

His brow furrowed. “Revan 6?”

“Don’t you remember it?”

“I’ve never even heard of it.” Now a faint smirk crossed his lips, hands tight in their parade grasp at the small of his back. “Was it one you commanded yourself, perhaps? And I take it the whole incident was a rout?” His lips, pressed tight together, suddenly lost all humour; he could taste ash upon his tongue, a burning pressure at the back of his throat. “That might be why I’ve never heard of it. Even the most perfect army can suffer defeat when wielded by the hand of one not suited to such task.”

With that blasted helmet between them, Hux could not see his eyes. Somehow he could feel Ren staring. And something odd remained in the line of his shoulders: hunched forward, tight against his torso, somehow. “Perhaps,” he said, abrupt, turning away. “Good day, General.”

Hux watched him go, though only for a moment. Things had never been simple between them, right from the beginning. He wondered if it ever would change.

“Ren.”

He paused, did not look back. “Yes?”

“Starkiller will be online very shortly. Will you be there?” When Ren did not move, he added, too quick and too sharp, “When she fires?”

Again, he held his silence a moment too long. “I will watch,” he said at last, slow, unreadable. “From wherever the Supreme Leader deems it most suitable.”

Curling his lip, Hux snapped his attention back to the viewport. Of course Ren would not be able to stand it, to be forced to observe the general’s greatest achievement. Not when it was one he had no direct hand in himself, for all he held the co-commandership of both base and battlecruiser. He had always been too fragile, too much of a child to allow another to revel in their achievements without himself seething in petty jealousy.

But it was not to Starkiller that he looked, now. Instead his eyes were caught by the stars that hung in the void around her great bulk. His quick mind could not come up with any explanation as to why, but: in them, he saw something strange. Uncertain. As if they had somehow _shifted_ , and he did not remember the time in which they had done so.

Pursing his lips, he dismissed the crawling sensation over his skin as pure foolishness. The bridge lay before him, and so did his his work. He had need for mysticism. Not even from the man who shared the command with him. He would pay no heed to this sudden sense of _emptiness_ , like a page torn from a journal, leaving a space empty and bare.

Hux had always been a man determined to craft his own story. As he stepped in quick military stride along the length of his ship’s command centre, he knew that he needed no-one else to help him do so. Because this story was only and ever his own.

And it would begin – and end – precisely the way he commanded it to.


End file.
